After determining proper business models for your marketplace, it’s time to find an appropriate technical solution to build up the platform. To create an online marketplace, there are 3 popular options: writing the codes on your own, hiring a web professional team, or using WordPress software. Each choice has its own pros and cons, which will be discussed in this post to help you have a better decision.

To build a pricing strategy for your marketplace is not easy. What works for this marketplace might not work for the others. Many people may prefer high rate while others think a very low rate would be effective in attracting a lot of users to site. There’s no right or wrong answer since each marketplace has its own business strategy including pricing structure to remain competitive in the market while still being able to make profit out of it.

Commission fee is the most popular business model whose pricing structure is also complicated to determine. How much should you charge? Should it be a same flat rate for every transaction or the percentage of the total sum? Who will pay the bill? The buyers, the sellers, or both? There’s no correct formula for this but we will discuss important aspects to help you decide the pricing for your marketplace.

Business models (aka revenue models) define the way you operate and monetize your marketplace. Among different models, commission is the most profitable one for online marketplace as it allows you to “own” every buying-selling activity and earn a fee per transaction. That said, there is a lot of work to do for this commission model to succeed. Transaction value is one of the challenges. To make a sound commission fee and keep users on site for a long time, the value provided for both providers and buyers need to be great enough so that your users won’t try to bypass your system.

This post will suggest some ways you can practice to provide value for users on your marketplace (in the scope of a service marketplace).

What are marketplace business models and why do they matter? Business models define how your business operates and generates revenue from its products and services. A scalable model is important to help your business achieve sustainability in the long run. In fact, there are many types of marketplace business model, each of which has its own pros and cons. So it is essential to find out and apply the most suitable model for your site.

What is online marketplace? What is hot about it that makes many people go for it? What are the reasons behind? If you intend to build an online marketplace, what do you need to prepare and what are the challenges? These are the common questions asked by you, I, and those who are interested in marketplace model and want to build one.

Thanks to the technology advance, there’s hardly any limit to what people can do. Marketplace models aren’t new, instead, they have existed for decades. But with the latest technology, marketplace is brought online and quickly becomes a popular trend.

Amazon, eBay, Uber, AirBnB, Etsy are typical examples of online marketplaces. However, to build such a successful marketplace is not easy. It’s not an overnight success, but requires a thorough preparation, an effective business strategy and a lot of hard work. In this series, we want to share our knowledge and experience after years helping thousands of customers build up their marketplace businesses.

This series will cover topics about: Opportunities and challenges of building an online marketplace; Different kinds of platform and business models; Choosing the right business model; What you need to know when building a marketplace website with WordPress. (more…)

In 2015, the big four U.S marketplaces, namely Amazon, eBay, Etsy and Jet, sold a total of over $100 billion worth of goods. And there’s no sign that these numbers will stop going upwards in the near future. According to the U.S Department of Commerce, online retail sales nearly quadrupled over the 10-year period from 2005 to 2015. Furthermore, this figure is projected to reach around $500 billion in 2018.

Online E-commerce Marketplace – The shopping destination of future

Traditional retailers have started to feel the impact of online marketplaces by making certain changes to adopt the growing trend of online shopping. Recently, Walmart has acquired Jet.com, tapping into the e-commerce competition, as they realized purchasing habits are gradually shifting from physical stores to online marketplaces.

That online e-commerce marketplace is rapidly booming and expected to become the new shopping destination can be broken down into multiple advantages it has over brick-and-mortar retailers. Millions of people shop at Amazon or eBay because of the extreme comfort these e-commerce platforms provide. With just a few clicks, while staying at home, consumers conveniently shop around the website, browse through a vast selection of items, read reviews from other customers, and compare prices before making the final buying decision.

WordPress is a powerful content management system (CMS) that can cater to any type of business you intend to build. Doing a small research about online business currently using WordPress, you’ll be amazed at its popularity among different types of websites. Creating a freelance website is hence totally a thing you can do in WordPress. This article will show important features and guide to set up freelance website with WordPress.

Big freelance websites like Upwork, Freelancer, and Guru are doing an excellent job in connecting people in need of projects done with millions of service providers. One of the core values contributing to the success of such marketplaces is a stable platform with all functions operate seamlessly. Therefore, knowing how to setup your site properly is very important.

In a freelance marketplace, project bidding function is used as a typical approach. To discuss in depth the project bidding on a freelance site, this article will go through this function’s definition, the reasons why it’s widely employed, and the workflow of how freelancer bids work on your website.

Freelancing industry is quickly emerging, excellently leveraging freelancer workforce all around the world. With technology being the major driving force, digital services have made profound impact on the working trend and interested a great number of people who prefer to work as freelancers. Building a freelance marketplace connecting freelancers and clients promises potential growth and success; still, it comes with challenges of a proper freelance business model and the main concept that makes your site run smoothly. If business model cares about how to monetize your platform, the main concept is the central workflow your users follow to accomplish the transaction. (more…)

“Make money online” as a freelancer has increasingly been a popular choice among young people. To build a platform connecting freelancers and clients, hence, has great potential to grow. If you plan to start your business career following this path, one of the first things to take into consideration is the proper freelance business model you will use for your business.

For an online freelance site, which business models available and how each differs from the others? Generally speaking, business model is the strategy on what you will do with your site to generate revenue. A good business idea together with an appropriate business model promises to be an effective monetization tool.

This post will list out possible freelance business models to help you pick up one that works best on your site.(more…)

Freelancing websites play a perfect role in connecting clients in need of getting projects done and freelancers, from all over the world, who are willing to provide services and get paid. For two sides to come together, freelancers can bid for any potential projects and clients will pick the most suitable one for their projects.

Having the intention of building a freelancing site, you must be wondering what steps you should take to realize your idea and bring it online. This is also the topic I’ll be covering shortly. But before that, I will talk about freelance marketplace concept as well as niche markets for your business.(more…)

Search box is among those elements that are usually underestimated and put behind big things like sales pages. However, an advanced search box is an effective navigation tool giving users quick access to information, which saves users a lot of time and makes them feel happier. Therefore, designing a search bar on your website is necessary to create a smoother user flow.

In this post, I will go into details about why you need an advanced search box on your directory website and some tips to consider for an effective search box design.(more…)

In the previous post, I went over core important features that should be cared for in the first stages of building your freelance site. After getting your site up and running with such key functions, it’s time you considered furnituring your site with supplementary features to attract more users. So this post is about additional features needed for a freelance site. (more…)

Theoretically, a micro job site design must include 4 main principles: buying, selling, profile settings, and account settings. According to your business model, these four principles are to be considered thoroughly to match the concept of your platform. That said, among these 4 fundamentals, selling and buying activities are the most important as they are responsible for triggering transactions between buyers and sellers on your micro job marketplace. Meanwhile, transactions are the ultimate purpose you aim to capture. Hence, a strong platform is more likely to handle micro job orders seamlessly.

This article will discuss in depth the first principle in a series of 4 principles to provide you with an overview about how to design your micro job marketplace and make it work effectively.

Outsourcing service has become popular thanks to multiple benefits it brings to business. It is especially the case for small and medium businesses since you can’t do all the jobs by yourself. Freelance websites have raised as a platform connecting project owners and skillful freelancers.

If you’re planning to develop a freelance website offering this kind of service but haven’t determined yet what features are needed, take a look at this article. There are 2 parts in this series; in part 1 I will go over core features to get your site up and running, then part 2 will introduce other additional features to help you build an advanced freelance website. (more…)